One Flew East
by AllThatGlistens
Summary: Diana hears the dead and sees her own hands kill them. Can she piece together what happened before it’s too late? Implied BMWW, PG13 for creepy.


One Flew East

Summary: Diana hears the dead and sees her own hands kill them. Can she piece together what happened before it's too late? Implied BMWW, PG13 for creepy.

Disclaimer: I definitely don't own any of this.

He'd said he was fine, but, then again, he always did. She walks between beds, between barely-beating hearts. Stops at one. "What's he lost?"

Soft voice responds. "Three pints of blood. Almost enough for soup."

Next one. "And her?"

She should break, but all she feels overwhelmed by is indifference. No cracks here, no sir. My place is here, yessir. She wants to giggle but can't shake the feeling that it's a bad idea. The voice hesitates, for a moment. "Eyes. They…used to be green."

She walks down the line, asking the same question, her voice never tiring of the words, silently catalogues the responses the way most people write to-do lists. A leg. An arm. A kidney, a wife. A future, a child. What's she lost? Where's it gone?

For some reason, she hesitates. Must be tired, she decides, must be dead on her feet. She ignores the voice that she refuses to hear, the one that says that doesn't really happen to her, now does it? It's so small she could crush it in her fingers.

She looks over what's left of this last shadowy figure and, sighing with boredom, asks the final time. "What's he lost?"

Soft voice giggles, pale hand gropes at the face. "Everything."

She smacks her lips together nonchalantly, contented noises ringing through this silent room. As a hard kiss lands on her lips, she savors not the carnal lust of her companion but the contentment of a job well done.

LINE

She cradles the bloody body in her arms, rocking back and forth slowly, methodically. Dry eyes, no tears, so she must be OK, right? Right?

Man, she's not moving at all. I'd feel better about it if she was bringing Metropolis down around her ears.

Diana? Hello?

Back off.

Why?

Slowly she stands up, not bothering to wipe away the blood in her hair, ears, mouth, torso. It's sticky, but she doesn't really care. She brings one hand across his eyes, shutting them, and gently shoves two coins from who-knows-where in his pocket so that he might pay the ferryman to the better world. As she slowly rises into the air, her path rocketing back and forth slowly she has only one prayer: That her prey will put up enough of a fight that she can call it self-defense.

LINE

Someone else is screaming for her. She rips her fist back, tightly grasping handfuls of red hair with bloody follicles. Quiet…All she needs is quiet.

LINE

Her voice sounds so even, so soothing that she can almost believe she's calm. "Bruce…Put him down. Please."

The man in black is muttering to himself. "Break his neck? Too fast. Heights are too messy…Poison is no fun at all." Slowly, he begins to tisk-tisk. The noise makes the blood in her veins cold. "Shove the bones in…slowly." Almost idly, he breaks a pale finger. "Shoot him in the spine, beat him with a crowbar…"

"Please…" She whispers again, no longer sure who she's begging. It's all so hazy, but this is _wrong_.

"The problem being," the man continues, "that eventually he must die, so I'll have to make my fun last…"

"Bruce, stop." She continues, increasingly feeble.

What's left of his eyes meet hers. "Who are you calling Bruce?"

LINE

"You are my sister." The redhead is _still talking_, as she dodges back and forth. Diana's playing with her now, she's beaten, badly, and she knows it.

"I will not kill you," Those green eyes challenge her.

Diana smirks. "Like you could."

"Maybe, maybe not." Her eyes flicker to the black man slumped over in the corner, it's just for a second.

Those green eyes judge her.

"But the point is I will never take another life." She limps around in an idle circle, the last one standing.

Diana shrugs, bored now. Those damn green eyes…She lunges.

LINE

A swirl of white. Flashing lights. Only this time, she's the one in the bed.

What did he give her?

I d-don-don't know. It's n-n-new.

Well, then, _fix it_.

I don-don't know h-h-how.

_Figure it out_. A pause.How much pressure are these restraints rated for?

LINE

Canary cry right in her ear. It hurts, where not much else does. So she makes sure that throat is no more. The crunch is wet and so very satisfying. She looks better as a redhead, anyway.

LINE

It was stupid of him to trust her. The very first thing she did…Well, who else would have Kryptonite so easily accessible? It was even in a bulky necklace, a lovely accessory. And the look on Kara's face when she saw Clark hit the ground, when she finally, _finally_, got it. Well, it was worth all the trouble in the world.

LINE

Her metabolism is so fast, it's really rather obnoxious. Have to keep up the dosage, or…

A pause. Oh, goodness, already?

"Shayera?" Her voice cracks.

"Yeah…" Her breathing is weak.

"What happened?"

"You did."

And, as the needle goes into her arm yet again she knows the unmistakable ring of truth when she hears it.

LINE

Well, the gal wasn't called "Super" for no good reason, must give her that. Tried to punch, tried to block, tried to fly, tried, tried and tried again. Tried with a broken arm, tried with internal bleeding, tried with a shattered jaw. Never fled, never cried.

Well, at the end a little bit, but who could blame her?

LINE

She walks down the hallway and doesn't slip in the blood. What massacre here? What, why…The good die young, she decides. That must be it.

Flash's eyelids flicker. "Hey."

"Hi." She says, and kneels next to him, and tries not to look at the others.

"You should probably go home," he says so softly he can barely hear it.

"Yeah," she answers, but she doesn't, not at all. She sits there are cries until her nose runs, until her cheeks puff up, until she can't see for the tears.

"I'm going to tear whoever did this into tiny pieces," she tells him without inflection.

Tries to nod, fails. "S'okay. We'll understand."

"That's good to hear." Well, that's good, 'cause it was the last thing he ever said.

LINE

She asks the one person she knows will tell her the truth. "I'm crazy now, aren't I?"

He just nods, and holds her hand. Doesn't flinch when she breaks it.

LINE

Some of them did escape. She supposes it was inevitable. Red Tornado wasn't any fun at all, though being an android did that to people.

LINE

Where's her own arm, anyway?

LINE

The other one sits with her now, eying the always-fraying leather nervously. He could stop her, certainly, but has no desire to, can't bring himself to break her bones and bash in her face.

"What happened?" She keeps forgetting.

"He's going to find him." He won't meet her eyes, terrified of what he'll find there.

"Will that help?"

She, wisely, takes his "maybe" to mean "Probably not."

LINE

Here's what actually happened:

She walks into the room for a meeting. The Detective, always, asks her when that needle-mark on her arm got there. She says she doesn't know. The Detective stands up and begins to take a closer look, touching her arm a bit more than necessary. She throws him into a wall, hard.

Suddenly the scene changes, and it's Darkseid, and everything is red and bright all day and all night and they're all dead, dead, dead. She comes at him with everything she's got, but it isn't enough, it couldn't possibly be, and she dies too.

Oh, wait. Maybe that was a dream, too.

LINE

Was it Clark or Wally who finally knocked her down?

LINE

So then she killed them all, but it was all in good fun. What's a little death between friends?

LINE

She's coherent now, but it won't, can't last. It grows rarer and rarer, first fifteen minutes, now five, now one and soon never.

This time she knows what happened and asks the important questions. "Why?"

The dark figure flinches noticeably, the trademark frown becoming a pained grimace. "Me."

She accepts this without question. "Did you find him?"

"Yes," He never did mince words. "J'onn's trying."

"Who died?"

He inhales to answer, but she's gone again.

LINE

Themiscyra sunk into the ocean with the rest of the world. It was curious that those flying creatures would drown, but what in this world isn't? Water went into their lungs just as surely as a spear into a stomach, and then it was over. Just a gigantic raft of bodies for the gulls to pick at.

Aquaman, of course, was no help at all.

They lived a while longer, up there in the sky, but really only long enough to watch them drown. Wally, Bruce, John, and Clark never really got over just about everyone they knew dying and took to moping about all day. It just got on her nerves, all those _men_ acting like they invented grief when she'd lost everything too.

So one day she was chopping some vegetables for soup…And, well, in her defense they really had been being obnoxious.

LINE

He pins her under, and she's drowning. She tries to scream, but nothing comes out. She bites him, but all that blood does is attract she sharks. She swears he's laughing. Suddenly it all stops, and she hears nursery rhymes she shouldn't, and tears and more tears. Then he's on top of her and the tears are hers and she can't kick him off even though she's so strong and no one's going to move him and she just keeps screaming and he just keeps giggling.

It's…all…slowing…down…

She hears once thing prior to blackness.

Guess we used enough sedatives this time.

LINE

She wakes up again, only to shiver in anticipation of the next event. She sits up, and she's home and it's bright. Relief floods through her, until she realizes what color the tiles are and why…

A green hand grabs her arm and tries to lead her away, but she struggles so wildly. It sighs heavily and becomes a black shadow and mutely she follows.

LINE

It's World War II again, and she wades through the bog, and tries to ignore the stink, and hopes so much that she won't see any faces she recognizes…

"No," the black figure stares her down, "Not here either."

This is such good news she doesn't dare argue.

LINE

The black figure wavers, becomes olive again, and then returns to black. "Are you okay?"

"…No."

He nods. "Good."

She waits for the fangs, for the pain, but there isn't any. "How far now?"

"That is very much up to you."

Diana had expected something like that, and just sighs.

LINE

She's trudged along for hours, but the longer she goes the happier the dark man seems so she just keeps on going.

"Almost there?"

"…Yes, I'd say so."

LINE

Her first reaction upon discovering herself restrained is panic, she wriggles wildly, but doesn't scream or cry, and then takes a good hard look at the locks. Sure look sturdy…

She glances up, to see a dark room and three men, one dark, one blue, one green.

"Hey there…" Bruce and Clark say together, in identical gentle tones and then stare at each other in pure amazement.

"J'onn," Bruce grabs his shoulder. "I think we're done here."

The Martian snaps out of it, looks up, smiles as much as he ever does these days. "I'm glad to hear it."

Clark gives her a thorough once-over, and at J'onn's nod begins to slowly undo the restraints. She sits up, rubs her wrists. Clark has a black eye, Bruce's entire arm is in a sling. J'onn, somehow, is limping.

"Oh…" She sinks back into the bed, grabs the food on the tray next to her that she finds and downs every bite, manners be damned.

She meets their eyes again, where she expects disgust there is unbridled relief.

"How long?" She asks.

"A week," says Clark, "Nine days," says Bruce.

"Oh…" There's really nothing else to say to that. Bruce slumps back into his chair and she feels his eyelids flicker shut, Clark hugs her around her shoulders and says he's going home to tell Lois the good news.

Over the next few days, the entire league streams in and out of the room the male two-thirds of their trinity is forcing her to stay in for a few more days.

Some leave flowers, many more walk around her, edgy. No matter the ridiculous lengths many of them go through to conceal their wounds, they are all injured badly. Vic and Helena visit her together, cracking dumb conspiracy jokes and looking at her with a newfound respect. Courtney and Kara visit together too, more out of fear than friendship, but they did bring chocolate. Clark brings Lois who, true to form, demands an interview. Shining Knight visits such a ridiculous number of complements on her that she can't help but giggle.

Every day, for an hour, she talks about what she'd seen and done in her visions with J'onn. She doesn't think it helps, but in a few months she'll be proven wrong.

Vigilante brings her what he calls a cure-all, a whole gallon of very cheap whiskey. Bruce pretends not to notice.

Shayera walks in and pretends she doesn't think it's weird that Diana runs her fingers through her hair, just to make sure it's all there.

Dinah cracks lewd jokes until she blushes, Ollie then outdoing her.

Bruce and his various family members are in and out all day, she knows he skips sleep often to sit with her, and she's thankful for it.

"So," she begins one day, "Because of you, huh?"

"Yes," If possible, he becomes even stiffer.

"Now, why would that be? Why not another," She coughs daintily for emphasis, "Respected colleague?"

"……" He has nothing to say to that, but she can't help but enjoy watching him squirm.

"I don't believe you don't know, Detective."

He stands up to sidle towards the door. Running away? Of course not. Hasty and strategically viable retreat, naturally.

She doesn't miss the blush. She never does.

A/N-We just finished The Things They Carried, in English class, which is what this largely came from. Fantastic book by the way. Bonus points for telling me where the title of this came from.


End file.
